3-hydroxypropionic acid which receives attention as a biomass-derived platform chemical together with lactic acid and succinic acid and can be used as a raw material for the preparation of 1,3-propanediol, acrylic acid, acrylamide, malonic acid or a biopolymer such as poly-hydroxypropionic acid. Therefore, the development of technology for producing large amounts of 3-hydroxypropionic acid is very important.
Known chemical processes for the production of 3-hydroxypropionic acid include a process of producing 3-hydroxypropionic acid from 1,3-propanediol in the presence of a palladium catalyst (U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,156), a process of producing 3-hydroxypropionic acid from 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde in the presence of a palladium/platinum catalyst (U.S. Pat. No. 5,831,121), a process of producing 3-hydroxypropionic acid using an ion exchange resin (Japanese Patent Publication No. 2000-159724), and a process of producing 3-hydroxypropionic acid from epoxide derivatives in the presence of an acid or base catalyst (Korean Patent No. 10-0408806).
With respect to biological methods, Suthers et al. of the University of Wisconsin reported a method of producing 3-hydroxypropionic acid from glycerol using a recombinant E. coli strain that overexpresses a glycerol dehydratase gene derived from Klebsiella pneumoniae and an aldehyde dehydrogenase gene derived from E. coli or Saccharomyces cerevisiae (U.S. Pat. No. 6,852,517). Recently, Rathnasingh et al. reported a novel recombinant E. coli strain that produces increased amounts of 3-hydroxypropionic acid from glycerol (Rathnasingh et al., Biotechnol. Bineng. 104:729-39. 2009).
However, the method of producing 3-hydroxypropionic acid from glycerol using the recombinant E. coli strain has a disadvantage in that the expensive coenzyme adenosylcobalamine (coenzyme B12) is required to be supplied to a culture medium in order to reactivate the glycerol dehydratase enzyme.
Meanwhile, the present inventors found that, when the aldehyde dehydrogenase gene in Klebsiella pneumoniae is highly expressed, 3-hydroxypropionic acid can be produced with high productivity without having to add coenzyme 12.
Accordingly, the present inventors have made extensive efforts to a method of producing an increased amount of 3-hydroxypropionic acid from glycerol by Klebsiella pneumoniae and, and as a result, have found that, when the gene encoding propanediol utilization protein of Lactobacillus reuteri is overexpressed in Klebsiella pneumoniae, 3-hydroxypropionic acid can be produced in high yield by the mutant Klebsiella pneumoniae strain, thereby completing the present invention.